Steven Spielberg has confirmed he’s mounting Stanley Kubrick’s famously unmade Napoleon Bonaparte film project as a large-scale limited series for HBO.
Speaking at the Berlin Film Festival, the legendary “Jaws” and “Schindler’s List” director says: “With the co-operation of Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan, we’re mounting a large production for HBO on based on Stanley’s original script Napoleon. We are working on Napoleon as a seven-part limited series.”
According to Deadline, the project is still in the development stages but it is nearing a series order at the premium cabler. It has reportedly been in the works for HBO for the last seven years with Spielberg himself involved for at least ten years.
Kubrick had originally planned the film after “2001: A Space Odyssey” and did extensive research. He had planned to film the movie across Europe, in France, the UK and Romania and the likes of David Hemmings and Jack Nicholson were up for the title role opposite Audrey Hepburn as his wife Josephine.
However the cost of filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk’s similar works including his multi-part epic “War and Peace” and his 1970 film “Waterloo” among other factors, saw the project abandoned with Kubrick taking the remnants of his work and using them in his 1975 feature “Barry Lyndon”.
Cary Joji Fukanaga and David Auburn were also linked to the series adaptation several years ago. The news comes as Ridley Scott has already filmed his own Napoleon film with Joaquin Phoenix in the role – that movie is due out towards year’s end.
